UPDATE - Shares in The New York Times have tumbled by almost 22% today as markets react to its “shockingly weak” advertising results.

The New York Times today reported a fall in digital advertising revenues and worse than expected overall results.

Digital ad revenue fell by 2.2% in the third quarter, and were down 2% in the first nine months, with no better news expected in the final quarter of the year.

However, despite the fall in advertising paid subscribers to the digital editions of The New York Times. and sister paper International Herald Tribune, rose by 11%  or 57,000 to total 566,000. Read More »

We all know the digital world is innovating at exponential speed and marketers are playing constant catch up.  Indeed, IBM’s recent Global CEO Study shows that organisations feel they are being bombarded by change and struggling to keep up.

That is why this year’s World Media Group Digital Communications seminar last week set out to provide an understanding of what these rapid transformations mean to advertisers, and how they should be adapting as a result.

This is because, as publishers, we have had to stay one step ahead of the digital curve.  There is a blizzard of information available over the internet; to retain the role of ‘trusted media brands’ we have had to adapt – continuing to deliver the highest quality content while being flexible enough to engage on different  platforms. Read More »

Adobe has some new US research out looking at consumer reaction to online advertising and it is’t good news. Consumers don’t like it.

While almost 70% of those polled were using social media, and over half had liked a brand page, 68% found online ads ‘annoying’ and ‘distracting’.

Critically for marketers, 54% said that online banner ads don’t work. Instead consumers would rather see ads on TV. Maybe more importantly 33% of marketers said banners don’t work.

Interestingly, while Facebook is testing a “want” button what the majority of consumers really want is a “dislike” button when it came to social media.

Read More »

What an odd year it has been for Facebook. It began with a disastrously overpriced flotation that has seen its $38 IPO price shredded on the markets troubled by the sudden thought that it can not make money out of mobile — despite some predicting otherwise.

It bought Instagram for a hefty $1bn and officially passed one billion users in early October. Despite that its share price continued to languished at around $19.

That was until yesterday when Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that 14% of the company’s ad revenue is coming from mobile. Read More »